SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA.- The San Luis Obispo Museum of Art announces Chimera: The Future of Nature, Central Coast artist Marcie Begleiter’s debut museum exhibition, on view July 3 – October 17, 2026.
Chimera: The Future of Nature is a series of films, photographs, and sculptures by Central Coast artist Marcie Begleiter. The work explores the ways that climate change is reshaping the natural world.
Begleiter collects objects from the environment, such as bones, seed pods, and dried plants, which she then uses to build her own detailed and modified landscapes. These hand-built worlds, along with her field photographs, become the raw material for five short films that use digital animation to add wind, water, and movement to the still images. The result feels like something between a documentary and a dream.
The work is grounded in climate science research, particularly understanding how living systems evolve in response to rapid environmental change. A chimera — in mythology, a creature of mixed parts from different species — becomes the artist’s metaphor for ecosystems that are finding unexpected ways to survive. In this exhibition, Begleiter utilizes the same material and re-engages it in multiple ways: in film, sculpture, photography, installation, and sound, to welcome close looking and reflection on environmental catastrophe and hope. These are not images of loss alone, but are portraits of stubborn and surprising resilience.
Emma Saperstein, Chief Curator at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, says: “The Central Coast is such fertile ground for artists like Marcie whose practice is research-based and rooted in nature. I am thrilled to finally have the opportunity to celebrate this dynamic and forward-thinking voice in contemporary art.”
Marcie Begleiter is a California-based artist and filmmaker whose interdisciplinary career bridges visual art, experimental cinema, and documentary film. Her work is characterized by a deep engagement with ecology, the sixth extinction, and the collaboration of other artists and scientists. She has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the German Film Fund, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
In 2024, she curated “Echoes of Voynich,” part of the Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time Art & Science Collide series, at Wönzimer Gallery in Los Angeles. Recent group shows include the Millennium Film Workshop, NY, the CICA Museum, Seoul, and the Los Angeles Center for Photography. Animation screenings include the Zebra Film Festival, Berlin; the Fotogenia Film Festival, Mexico City; and the Swedenborg Festival, London. In 2015, The Whitney Museum of American Art premiered her feature documentary Eva Hesse.
